Eye on: Photographer Matt Schwartz

We recently came upon the work of photographer Matt Schwartz at the Brooklyn Flea flea market and were struck by the simplicity and nostalgic beauty of his Polaroids. Apparently, we’re not the only ones. Schwartz, 35, told us that last year Catherine Zeta-Jones bought five of his framed pieces (she picked them out herself at an Upper West Side craft market) and that Anthropologie purchased 200 images to sell throughout their stores. Last year, he was one of sixty artists commissioned by the Ace Hotel to create work for the rooms.

“My motivation is to try and capture all of my dreams and images that I feel need to exist in this world,” he says. “Sometimes when I take a photo, I feel it already existed and I just found it first.”